Magazin „POLY“ - Free Guide 2022

COME TOGETHER AT JULIUS VON BISMARCKS “NEUSTADT”.
In spring 2021 Julius von Bismarck and Marta
Dyachenko planted miniature replicas of typical
Ruhrgebiet architecture in the North Duisburg Landscape
Park. They included a shabby department
store, a neo-Gothic church, an apartment block
and an indoor swimming pool with a chute. The
project is an exciting new addition to the Emscher
Art Trail, which is best explored by bike. The tiny
buildings stand unobtrusively at the edge of the trail.
It’s worth dismounting for a closer look because all
the buildings – more than 20 in number – recreate
architectural structures that have disappeared or
been demolished in recent years and past decades.
The effect is atmospheric and nostalgic.
The tiny monuments – if we can call them
that – have already started to rust in places and are
visibly sinking into the greenery. Grass is growing
around the Essen Adult Education Centre, and a
buttercup in front of a 1960s tenement block in Marl
stretches as high as the second-floor balcony. You
might be forgiven for thinking of Sleeping Beauty,
were it not for the fact that the Ruhr area has long
since been revived. Culture and nature have replaced
dirt and heavy industry, and this could also
be the magic spell behind the Emscher Art Trail.
This unique sculpture project tells us a lot
about the region, its history and its little river, the
Emscher. A century ago it was a cesspool, fed
by the sewage from the Ruhr area. For decades
it flowed along a deep concrete bed and was
generally acknowledged to be the filthiest river in
Germany. Today, after almost 30 years of renaturation,
the picture is entirely different. The banks
along the river are richly verdant. Chemicals and
excrement have long disappeared from the water,
reeds are growing and fish can swim in peace.
Kingfishers have also been sighted.
The Emscher Art project has been tied into
this unprecedented clean-up since 2010. Artists
have been coming here every three years. Many
of their works have been temporary and disappeared
again after a single summer. One prominent
example was the thousand small tents that Ai Wei
Wei set up on the riverbank. Other works have
remained to populate the Emscher Art Trail, along
with new additions in the coming years.
From the small-scale replica buildings in the
North Duisburg Landscape Park, it is only a few
kilometres ride to the Kaisergarten in Oberhausen
Each of the works on
the Emscherkunstweg
has been created
especially for its
particular location.
where Tobias Rehberger’s spiral bridge – it consists
of 496 aluminium arches – elegantly and effortlessly
spans the Rhine-Herne Canal. The buoyant
walkway winds back and forth over the canal on
colourful plastic flooring and is intended to look
like a rope being thrown over the water. Now it’s
time to get back on your bike.
The trail continues along the canal to a
sculpture called the “Zauberlehrling”. You can see
it from afar protruding over the tree tops in the
middle of the Ripshorst woodland garden. It’s a
pylon; but nothing like a regular electricity pylon,
for it stands twisting and waving alone in a field.
While all its many uniform counterparts in the
vicinity are dutifully carrying their power cables
on out-stretched arms, the “Zauberlehrling” has
liberated himself. Perhaps he prefers to invest his
energy elsewhere.
If you go a little further back to the “sorcerer’s
apprentice“ in Goethe’s poem, the sculpture created
by a group called "Inges Idee" in 2013 could also
be interpreted as a critical reference to the technical
progress since the industrial revolution and its everincreasing
consumption of natural resources. As
Goethe wrote, “I shall never be able to rid myself of
the spirits I have conjured up”. This might also be the
case with regard to the future of our planet.
The Emscherkunstweg is a cooperation
between Urbane Künste Ruhr, Emschergenossenschaft
and Regionalverband Ruhr, is supported
by the Ministry for Culture and Science of the
Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia. It quickly
becomes clear that this whole project is not about
the harmonious coexistence of art and nature, as
is so often the case with sculpture gardens, parks
and trails. Each of the works on the Emscher Art
Trail has been created especially for its particular
location. They reflect and comment on the history
and transformation of the Ruhr region in a variety
of different ways.
BREEZY
POLY MAG 2022
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POLY MAG 2022 BREEZY
45